Rottnest is the home to the quokka, a small marsupial with a pouch similar to Kangaroos and Wallabies. In 1696 de Vlamingh thought that quokkas were “a kind of rat as big as a common cat” and he named the Island ‘Rotte nest’ (meaning ‘rat’s nest’).

Rating: 500 Frequent Bio Points

The entrance to the Ridgeback trail is on the Telephone Road about 1.5 km north of Quinninup.

Finding the trail

Walking north of Quinninup, go past Karri Lake on the right and the new forest re-plantations on the left. After a turn in the bend at the top of the road you will eventually find a small sign post indicating a forest track called Telephone Road.

This is near the entrance to the Ridgeback trail.

This trail is much underused. In fact the original sign for the trail was lying flat on the ground and was therefore hard to find.

The trail itself is largely overgrown and the signage can be hard to follow at times. If you are persistent you will come across some beautiful and tranquil forest scenes. There is a feeling of remoteness in places.

I love this walk.

Frogs

This was a particularly good wet winter. We need more of these!

And the frogs were happy.

Along Telephone road near the Bark road turn off the frogs seemed to be in conversation with each other.

Rating: 500 Frequent Bio Points

On my way to Karri Lane I came across a clan of magpies living near the town’s park on the edge of the forest. Sitting down at one of the picnic tables I turned my sound recorder up high to try and capture the magpies caroling in the trees tops. To my surprise a curious magpie* flew down, hopped up onto the table and started to talk into the microphone. It blew the recording meter right off the scale! Luckily I managed to save most of the recording. You can hear him from about 0.48 (volume has been reduced).